


Menagerie of Four

by Cantatrice18



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Feels, Fluff, Friendship, Insight, Love, One Shot, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 03:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8781265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cantatrice18/pseuds/Cantatrice18
Summary: Newt sees Queenie as a creature, one in need of help.Tina sees Newt as a loose cannon she isn't sure she can (or wants to) contain.Jacob sees Tina as a leader whose heart might just hide a softer side.Queenie sees Jacob as a revelation, a sort of man she's never before experienced.





	1. Little Blonde Bird

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter was originally published as a stand-alone work with the title "Little Blonde Bird". The next chapters are new works.

She was a creature, in his mind. When he’d first met her, she’d seemed like nothing more than Tina’s shadow (albeit a cheerful, chattering shadow with excellent perception). Yet the more he watched her, the more he saw her as an animal – a bird, perhaps, something with bright plumage. He did not understand people, not most of them anyway, but he understood sorrow. He’d seen bowtruckles mourn their fallen comrades and graphorns bellow in distress when separated from their young. He’d watched, helpless, as the mother occamy had starved herself in grief over the death of her mate, leaving him with a nest full of eggs and a handful of shining feathers to remember her by. Queenie was a creature in pain, and it was that pain which made him overcome his usual awkwardness and approach her. He could not help every creature he came across, but he could help her, and she needed him as surely as any of the beasts in his trunk. Healing her would take time and great care. He knew instinctively that her sort of creature was monogamous, that she would only love once and never again. His brain deduced, quite logically, that the only way to save her was to reunite her with her mate. Jacob might have been obliviated, but he was still her partner, her love, and she deserved to live happily with him for as long as she could. That Queenie might have chosen her mate poorly never occurred to him, as of all the monogamous beasts he’d seen, he’d never once met a badly matched pair. Nature knew its business. No law, magical or otherwise, could prevent nature’s course. Thanks to MACUSA, he had his work cut out for him, but he was determined not to leave until he’d at least attempted to help both lovers find each other again. Because, he realized, Queenie and Jacob were not birds or fish or cats, but the rarest creatures of all: friends. And if he couldn’t help his friends, then what good was he?


	2. A Dog with a Bone

He was like a puppy, this Mr. Scamander, always racing off to startle some pigeons or chase a mouse through a field. Never mind that his ‘mice’ were the size of motorcars, or that his various creatures posed an unprecedented threat to wizarding secrecy worldwide. Mr. Scamander simply had to go tearing off after another escaped beast, clutching his battered suitcase full of creatures all the while. A part of her wanted to take the suitcase and throw it in the river, where its contents couldn’t hurt anyone, but deep down she knew that losing the suitcase would break Mr. Scamander’s heart. The creatures were his life, as strange and eccentric a life as it was. She couldn’t bear to see the look in his eyes, the confusion and pain, should anyone take those creatures away. He had such lovely eyes, clear blue and wide like a child’s whenever he talked of his travels or the beasts he’d seen. She could sense the excitement, the enthusiasm coming off of him in waves, and it sent a tingle through her limbs when she heard him speak. She hated that her body reacted in that way to him, an oblivious foreigner wreaking havoc in her city. By all rights she should loathe him, should do everything and anything in her power to get him out of New York and on the first boat back to England. A professional would do just that and not blink an eye. Yet whenever she thought of losing him, whether by deportation or because he’d somehow evaded capture and disappeared, she felt a shard of ice embed in her heart, and her efforts to keep him within sight redoubled. Perhaps she was not such a professional after all.


	3. Mother Goose

She was very bossy. He’d known other women like that, particularly within his own family. The Kowalski women weren't exactly famous for keeping their opinions to themselves. None of them had wielded a magic wand, however, or ever managed to transport him from one side of New York to the other in seconds. It was actually rather a good thing that this particular woman was so domineering, since it reminded him he wasn’t dreaming. His mind wouldn’t come up with an irritable brunette in a worn, grey coat who harangued his travelling companion while simultaneously making napkins fly like gulls across the room. And it certainly wouldn’t come up with the blonde one as well, a woman whose graceful neck and slim waist made him feel…well, he wouldn’t have had the imagination to make all that up. He couldn’t understand everything the two women said to one another. They seemed to have a language of their own. He understood enough, though, to realize that the brunette was determined to have her own way and take command no matter what her sister, or the odd Mr. Scamander, said to the contrary. Yet unlike the foreman of his factory, the young woman seemed to actually care about them, all of them, even him. He was a stranger to them all, a “No-maj”, whatever that entailed, but his safety mattered to her. As he listened to her more and more, he realized that she was not so much a leader, but a guardian, a protector. He was reminded strongly of the geese in the park who pecked at the heels of passing couples and hissed at bicyclists while protecting their fuzzy goslings. He never thought he’d need someone like that in his life, but as he learned more and more about the strange world of magic and beasts, he felt relieved to have her skills and her instincts on his side. Of all the bossy women he’d known, she was by far the best.


	4. Exotic Pet

She’d never met anyone like him before. Of course, she’d seen plenty of them walking down the streets of New York every day, but this was different. This one talked. To her. On purpose. She’d always thought No-maj men parroted back words they’d been told, about the stock market, politics, the weather, without really listening to one another. But this No-maj listened. He listened and he replied, jaw slack as he stared into her eyes. What he didn’t say out loud, his mind said for him. She could read him with astonishing clarity, and what she read was beautiful. All his joys, all his sorrows, his hopes and dreams, flowed forth from him like a river of thought and emotion. He was kind and generous, eager to help and eager to please. His doubts, in himself and his future, made her heart ache for him, while his dreams of a bakery and a life free of factory work and the scent of canned food made her feel a warmth all over her body. She forgave him his initial thoughts about her. She could hardly blame him for desiring her, considering how little clothing she’d been wearing at the time they’d met. She’d even dressed slowly and sensuously, just to annoy her sister and to tease their visitors. She freely took the blame for that. Yet long after they’d settled in for dinner, his mind still lingered on her, and not just on the scandalous cut of her peach and black slip either, but on the stories she told and the way she laughed. She had no idea whether all No-maj men were secretly like this, and she’d failed to notice before, or if this one was different. An exotic creature, unlike any other, whose open mind and sincere heart drew her to him like a summoning charm. She wasn’t sure how long her sister intended to have the two men around, but part of her wanted to keep the No-maj forever, simply to talk to. After all, she might never find anyone else like him again.


	5. Vision

He couldn’t breathe properly. Even now, when she’d long since put on clothes like a normal woman and the four of them had sat down to dinner, he still felt a tightness in his chest, like his heart was pressed up against his ribs. She reminded him of a little photograph one of the men in his unit had brought from home during the war, a tiny print smaller than his palm of a curvaceous blonde wearing white, feathery angel wings and nothing else. His embarrassment when he learned his hostess could read minds was so great he wanted to run back to his dilapidated apartment and hide under his bed for at least a month, but the woman was as gracious as a duchess, forgiving him for his crude thoughts and assuring him he was not alone in imagining such things about her. That, at least, didn’t surprise him. There wasn't a man alive whose heart wouldn’t skip a beat at the sight of those shapely limbs and delicate features and those eyes, those hypnotic green eyes. He never wanted to look away from her, never wanted to break her gaze in case he was dreaming after all. His mouth seemed unable to form words to answer her curious questions, but she answered herself each time, reacting to the bits and pieces of things that floated aimlessly through his mind. The other two, Mr. Scamander and the beautiful blonde woman’s sister, both seemed to fade into the distance, their voices indistinct and unimportant. What did they matter when he had an angel sitting across from him, her elbows propped on the table and her chin resting on her linked hands as she spoke? At this point, he was convinced he’d be content to never hear another person’s voice again so long as she continued to speak, never even look at another woman so long as he could be near this one, perfect creature for the rest of his life.


	6. Serpentine

He was an odd one, Mr. Scamander. From the moment they’d met, he’d shied away from her. His mind was guarded, enough that she couldn’t get an instant read on him the way she could with most other men, His thoughts slithered away from her each time she tried to latch on, leaving her with the barest outlines of images. She didn’t bother investigating right then, distracted as she was by his companion, but the feel of his mind stayed with her, bothering her. The thing that set Mr. Scamander apart, she realized much later, was that his mind did not change when he found out her abilities. Most people threw hastily constructed fences up around their most private memories the moment they discovered her legilimency, ignoring the fact that by bringing those intimate memories to the forefront of their minds they managed to reveal every last one of their secrets to her without her even having to try. Mr. Scamander was different. His mind was permanently shielded against the outside world. Something had hurt him, or someone, enough to erect a barrier between him and people. It was sad, really. He seemed sweet, if a bit shifty, and he certainly managed to keep her sister occupied in a way nothing else had since Tina’s demotion from Law Enforcement. She hoped he wasn’t hiding anything too dark behind his mental barricade. Good manners had taught her to respect people’s privacy should they choose to keep parts of themselves hidden, but when it came to Tina there was no line she wouldn’t cross. If something dangerous lurked behind Mr. Scamander’s innocent blue eyes, she wouldn’t hesitate to topple his carefully constructed walls and hunt down anything that might hurt the only person she had left.


	7. Deadweight

If Mr. Scamander hadn’t managed to forget the most basic principle of interaction with a non-magical being, the No-maj would not have been a problem. Everyone might have gone about their day like normal witches and wizards. But instead the No-maj was in her home, eating her food, flirting with her sister. Well, to be fair, Queenie was doing most of the flirting. He was mostly just staring, and she could hardly blame him for that, given her sister’s looks, personality, and inborn magical power. It was a killer combination. What Queenie and Mr. Scamander seemed unable to comprehend was the danger the No-maj posed to their kind. Harmless and dim as the No-maj might look, he still belonged to a race of bigots and murderers who wouldn’t hesitate to begin rounding up every man, woman, or child they suspected of magic. The New Salem zealots were proof of that. One off-hand remark to a friend or family member, and this chubby, bearded No-maj could start a literal witch hunt that would spell disaster for the magical community worldwide. He had to be obliviated as soon as possible. Preferably before her sister got too attached and decided to keep him as a pet.


	8. His Creature

He found her puzzling. Not threatening, per se, despite her affiliation with MACUSA, but formidable in her own way. She was a hunter, well-trained and determined. She was the sort of creature to defend her territory to the death, no matter how foolish or hopeless the battle was. Even when reprimanded by her superiors she continued her fight, never conceding or retreating.

She was other things, too. Softer things, kinder things. Why else would she have taken him into her home nest, fed him her food, revealed her own personal weak spot, her sister? He could see the vulnerability in her as she urged him to stay with them for the night, her eyes pleading even as she spoke the words. There was a trust between them, one he hated to break, though he knew he must. His creatures were more important than her. Yet it was surprising how often he had to repeat that fact in his head when he thought back to the way their eyes had met across the little dining table.

She was his ruin. Her interference had caused every last creature, from the final graphorns in existence to the tree full of bowtruckles, to be wrenched from his caring hands and placed in the charge of wizards with no experience or interest in magical creatures. Even knowing she was doing her job made it worse, not better. Yet the moment she’d been accused of a crime he’d felt the need to protect her, to defend her as he had been unable to defend his creatures. 

She was so afraid to die. It kept him sane, kept him from collapsing under the weight of his own fear, to see her shaking with terror. He knew death, in animal and human form, had seen it on the front lines of the war and even before. If his wrists had not been chained he would have held her close to his chest, stroked her back and made soothing sounds in her ear as he did with the baby occamys when they were frightened. He realized, with the cool sort of numbness that comes from despair, that she would be the final creature he would have to watch die.

It didn’t surprise him, her story of how she’d lost her place as an auror. She was a protector, and in her mind the New Salem boy was her young. Of course she would defend him. It was in her nature. To expect otherwise would be foolish. He would never understand MACUSA or the Ministry, expecting consistent results from everyone in a field. Not every auror was the same. He would wager nine out of ten aurors could overlook the New Salem boy’s neglect, maybe more. But Tina could not. And he knew, with absolute certainty, neither could he.

He’d never had a partner. Friends, yes, not many but a few. But someone to stand and fight beside him, a person who thought enough like him to follow him into danger for the sake of something in pain. She was that person, that exception, and she understood at once why he could not give up on an obscurial, not this time. She did not simply follow, she led alongside him, as determined as he. In the light of the burning city, with destruction all around, she had never looked more like a wild creature, nor as magnificent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter, for the foreseeable future. Thanks for reading, your comments are appreciated!


End file.
